


do you even lift

by mstigergun



Series: Inglorious [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Post Haven, Skyhold, let's talk about family, strong qunari bf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mstigergun/pseuds/mstigergun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Leonid huffs, though he leans in closer all the same. “This is called </i>charming<i>, you brute, not </i>bothering<i>. I’ve even gone out of my way to compliment you. You know I don’t </i>do<i> that for just anyone."</i></p><p>Leonid needs someone to lift some heavy things at Skyhold, and Basten's happy to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do you even lift

** do you even lift **

*

Of course Leonid finds the tavern a scant hour after it’s been cobbled into something resembling order. The door bangs open only moments after being put back on its hinges, and Leonid shoulders his way past the stack of chairs tucked against the wall, skirting the pile of tables and rubbish they’ve centralized in the main room.

It might not be much, this tavern, but it does offer something critical: a sense of normalcy. The Herald – Inquisitor, now, Basten supposes – understands that not everyone can help the injured or shore up the foundations or establish trade routes. Which is why the surly dwarf had been appointed to the task of rounding up whoever he could find and bringing them to the empty building. “Inquisitor’s orders,” grunted Cabot when he found Basten and some of the other Kata-Meraad mercenaries out behind the sagging building. “Better come clean some shit up.”

It was one of the reasons the Inquisitor was well-chosen for the position – it took a remarkable person to have an accurate sense of the pulse of such a disparate group of followers. But, surely, if ever there was a pulse to an organization like the Inquisition, it beat itself ragged inside of the tavern.

Basten and Raset and a few other mercenaries, along with those whose hands have been idle in the courtyard and castle beyond, set themselves to wrestling the tavern into something resembling order under Cabot’s scrutiny. They’d unearthed tables and chairs in need of repair tucked away in odd corners, swinging candelabras in crates on the third floor that needed hanging in the main room, refuse that required gathering and sorting and, occasionally, tossing out of the third floor windows to much amusement.

All in all, for being housed in an ancient and forgotten keep, the tavern is… well-equipped and in need of a thorough cleaning and a thoughtful restocking more than anything else. But of course Leonid would find his way there once the bulk of the work was finished, once it resembled an actual _tavern_ instead of the shitheap they’d first set foot in. The man has a refined sixth sense for such things. As he’d said on their trek through the Frostbacks, _I’ve entirely fulfilled this year’s requirements for good deeds and am looking forward to doing nothing more onerous than dazzling dignitaries with my smile until next First Day_.

“Basten,” says Leonid, pushing through the dim and cluttered room to the foot of the stairs, where Basten is lifting and maneuvering a table to the far wall. Pale sunshine fights its way through the grimy window, past maybe a century of accumulated dirt – but the tables are sturdy and the room will suffice once it’s been rearranged. And scrubbed. Several times over at least.

“Leonid.” Basten twists as he angles the broad top of the table so that it can squeeze past the bottom of the stairs. It’s heavy, thick enough to withstand even the most rigorous of drinking games, and makes the muscles of his arms strain as he hefts it up and around.

There’s a long pause, and Basten shoots Leonid a quick, appraising glance. Leonid’s mouth has opened the barest fraction of an inch, dark stare flicking from the shape of Basten’s arms to the taut muscles of his shoulders.

Good to know, he thinks with a warm pleasure, that even after so many weeks on the road together, he can still – _impress_.

“Trevelyan,” barks the dwarf across the room, which makes Leonid jerk back, surprised. “No room for idle hands here. If you’re going to stare, you can lift.”

“The idleness is but an illusion,” Leonid says, shooting Cabot an apologetic smile, though Basten can see the very tips of his ears darkening. “In fact, these hands are otherwise occupied by very important business.”

The dwarf grunts.

“So here is my problem,” continues Leonid, again pivoting to face Basten, who’s now fighting to edge past the bannister and wrestle this table in place. Before him, the floor is cluttered with chairs not yet tucked neatly into place.

“Do you mind?” asks Basten, tipping his head toward one spindly chair, which rests between him and the table’s final resting place.

“No, it’s fine. Don’t let me stop you: I can talk while you lift,” says Leonid, still standing firmly in place.

Basten sighs, using his leg to push the chair out of the way as he holds the table aloft. He edges forward, twisting and ducking to avoid getting tangled in the low rafters.

“As I was saying,” Leonid continues, stepping after Basten so that he remains hovering by his side. “My problem. Lady Montilyet has given me permission to claim my own quarters in Skyhold. I have subsequently found a room that’s entirely out of the way but not _too_ far from the tavern. It’s also filled to the brim with a hundred years worth of _shit_. She said that, so long as I clear it out, it can be mine and _mine alone_ , which is really what I was after.”

Basten grunts, dropping the table into place. Dust plumes the air, and Leonid coughs waving it away. “I’ll be sent off soon enough,” adds Leonid, while Basten picks up chairs and sets them into place around the table, pushing barrels toward the exterior wall and stacking them to create a clear path for the next table. Since he can’t count on help from a certain quarter. “Something about _trade routes_ and _nobles_ , et cetera, et cetera. So there is a rather strict timeline on the whole affair.”

Basten brushes the dust from his hands, looking down at Leonid, whose stare remains as dark and fixed and _insistent_ as always. He’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, which is – new. A type of jittery energy Basten hasn’t seen in him since that first trip they made out to the woods, when he was _desperate_ to get back to the tavern.

“And this is a problem,” says Basten, eyebrows inching up on his forehead.

“It’s a _problem_ ,” says Leonid, “because, while I have done my very best to clear the place out, there remain certain objects entirely beyond my hefting capabilities.” As he says it, his mouth twitches into a frown, something tinged with distaste, as though admitting that there is something of which he isn’t capable leaves him deeply unhappy.

“Your hefting capabilities,” repeats Basten, a slow grin spreading across his face. Because of _course_ Leonid would be upset that he can’t haul things around, though the extent to which he even _tried_ remains – questionable. To put it politely. “So you’ve moved, what – a picture frame or two?”

Leonid scoffs, folding his arms across his chest, though his eyes glitter through the mask of irritation. “Hardly. Those gilt frames are a crime against the Maker himself, and you know I can’t touch ugly things. I break out in hives.”

“Which means,” says Basten, looking at the small, uneven smirk, the dark flashing eyes, the tilt of his head, “that you need someone to move things for you.”

“Just so,” says Leonid.

“And you want me to help.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Basten, but you’re fairly good at _lifting_ things. Something to do with your ridiculous arms and being a towering giant.”

Basten laughs, resting one arm against a stack of barrels. “Right,” he says. “Don’t you have another tall and strong friend you could bother?”

Leonid huffs, though he leans in closer all the same. “This is called _charming,_ you brute, not _bothering._ I’ve even gone out of my way to compliment you. You know I don’t _do_ that for just anyone. And if you’re referring to Sacha, he’s already been co-opted by some refugees to help with some obscure task or another. He can never quite manage to say no when someone’s looking especially sad or bedraggled. So no, Basten, you are my _only hope_ in this venture. And I do promise I’ll make it worth your time.”

Basten takes in the shape of Leonid’s features, the wicked curl of his mouth, the angle of his shoulders. For someone who’s apparently set on isolation, he thinks distantly, Leonid’s not very good at managing to put that into practice. “Will you, now?”

“Why, naturally,” purrs Leonid, his steady gaze one so familiar and heated it makes warmth buzz beneath Basten’s skin – a familiar pull, as easy as that _look._ He pauses, then adds, immediately shaping his face into something far _friendlier_ and lacking any of the earlier heat, “You can move things out of my quarters; I will regale you with stories about my childhood while I perch in a beam of sunlight and look entirely too handsome. You could hardly ask for payment beyond _that.”_

Leaning in one moment and away the next. But it hardly matters: Leonid ends up in the same place regardless – as eager as if he hadn’t been promising to leap into the first set of open arms that _weren’t_ Basten’s, ready just the same.

If he wants to bluster, he can bluster. Basten can wait it out. Or move on, if it comes to that. “Stories about your _childhood,”_ says Basten after a moment. “With that kind of promised entertainment, I couldn’t say no.”

Leonid laughs, a brief, delighted sound, and clasps a hand to Basten’s arm. It’s a quick touch, one that doesn’t linger, but a steady weight while it’s there. With a flash of a smile, Leonid slips away and toward the door, hovering by the exit and stopping to chat with Raset, who’s fighting with broken chairs and twine and glue as she perches on a sturdy table.

Basten approaches Cabot, who’s scrubbing the top of the bar with a surly glower on his face – which seems to be the man’s perpetual look. “I’ll be back before long,” Basten offers.

The dwarf grunts, shrewd stare flashing up. “Sure. Soon as Trevelyan realizes the casks are open, you’ll both be back.” He returns to his scrubbing immediately.

Heat prickles at the back of Basten’s neck. Well, he thinks, Cabot isn’t necessarily wrong, but then they’ve all been through an ordeal. Everyone finds comfort where they can.

Across the dim room, Leonid laughs at something Raset has said. Basten shrugs, and then turns and follows the bright sound.

“How did you even find a room already?” asks Basten when finally Leonid tears himself away from Raset and they cut off across the muddy yard, the ground soggy under heel, trampled by so many feet at work. “I don’t think anyone else has even considered _housing.”_

“Ah, but everyone else didn’t have to deal with always getting the _worst_ room at their aunt’s river estate because they were the youngest and therefore subject to the whims of their elders,” explains Leonid, trailing up the stairs and through the decrepit keep, which is a mess of rubble and scaffolding and tattered banners. Even the fire roaring in the hearth does nothing to tame the drafts howling down the hall.

“How many siblings?” asks Basten, following Leonid’s back as he turns up another set of stairs. The torches in the stairway flicker, unsteady, much like this entire thing – finding a castle in the mountains, gaining a foothold _here,_ while the world tumbles toward ruin.

Easier to focus on small things, he thinks. A wry look, moving furniture, childhood. Things with a beginning and an end that isn’t _the end._

“Four,” sighs Leonid over his shoulder as they crest the stairs. The great hall stretches below them, even more of a disaster from the higher vantage point. Leonid smiles thoughtlessly at Enchanter Vivienne as they slip by, the woman directing some servants in the placement of furniture in what Basten can only assume has become her office.

“Two brothers and two sisters,” Leonid continues once they’ve cleared Vivienne’s earshot, “and all of them _insufferable._ And so I’ve learned the necessity of staking claim sooner rather than later. It was a hard lesson, one that I learned every summer for many years. Always nearest our aunt’s room and so subjected to her snoring. She made things rattle, Basten. Through the walls!”

They duck underneath scaffolding that the engineers have already erected on the narrow balcony on the other side of the hall, pushing past a dark little arched recess and into the walkway above the gardens below. “Here we are,” says Leonid happily, slipping past a series of closed doors to the last one. “If I’m clever about the whole thing,” he adds, pausing to gesture toward the low roof running below the walkway, “I can hop down there, and then up and over to the ramparts and make my way to the tavern _that_ way. If I’m especially concerned about Lady Vivienne seeing me in a less than… respectable state.”

“You worry about that?” asks Basten, surprised.

Leonid’s eyebrows form a line of disbelief. “Of _course_ I worry about that. She is a wonderful and absolutely terrifying woman, and I think I should throw myself off the side of this blighted mountain if she ever had cause to be _truly_ disappointed in me.”

Basten huffs out a dry laugh. It’s a feeling he understands.

“So,” says Leonid. “This would be _mine,_ presuming you can make good use of your… gifts.” He pushes open the door, which stutters to a stop halfway through its swing. A disgusted noise flies from Leonid’s throat, and he presses his shoulder hard against the wood, feet slipping out from underneath him as the door refuses to give way.

“You’ll see,” grunts Leonid as he shoves harder, “my _problem.”_

Basten reaches over Leonid’s back, and gives the door a hard push. It grinds open, Leonid stumbling forward before he catches himself.

“Well,” says Basten, sliding past Leonid and squinting around the narrow, rectangular space. “No wonder Lady Montilyet said you could have it.”

It’s a dark little room, lit by a scant window in the far wall, one that’s caked in layers of grime,  so Leonid’s assurance that he would bask in sunlight while Basten hauled things out of the room was entirely fictionalized. There is a small fireplace in the corner, but it’s thick now with ashy cobwebs – if, that is, one looks past the blanket of dust covering the rubble of every shape and size that fills the place up.

To Leonid’s credit, most of that debris has been – centralized. Heaped against the front wall of the room, which leaves the dust- and dirt-streaked floors bare except for a few large pieces of furniture. Or what used to be furniture.

“It’s hardly _finished,”_ supplies Leonid, walking into the middle of the narrow room. His feet leave a scuffed trail through the dirt. “Once it’s cleared out, it ought to be as good a place as any from which to help save the world. Or, you know, a place that lends itself well to illicit activities when _not_ saving the world.”

Basten laughs, moving forward and cutting another path through the dust. He reaches out and brushes the stone walls, which are cold but dry. His fingers come away tipped with dirt.

He shoots Leonid a pointed look. “Your summers were bad enough to make _this_ look good.”

“Maker,” sighs Leonid, punctuated by an airy gesture made with one hand. “You can’t even imagine! My aunt on one side, Mother and Father on the other, while Viktor and Alla and Yuliya all had rooms that faced the water. I listened to snoring and my parents arguing _endlessly_ about _everything,_ while _they_ – my siblings, not my blighted parents – snuck out and went swimming underneath the moonlight. Of course Iona didn’t go, but then his idea of fun was _reading,_ which he _could do_ because he wasn’t kept awake at night by our _aunt.”_

Basten puffs out a breath, wandering toward the window. He squints out past the grime at the mountains beyond. The bright morning light catches on the snow blanketing the peaks, glittering an impossibly perfect white in the distance. The sky overhead is a fragile, pale blue.

It’s a feeling he knows, Basten thinks distantly, being trapped inside four walls. Being _held_ while others roamed free, delighting in what they had.

He glances back, watching Leonid scuff his toe along the floorboards. “I know a thing or two about being left out,” says Basten finally, which pulls Leonid’s attention up – that dark gaze lighting on him. Attention brighter than the sun when it finally falls Basten’s way.

“But,” he continues, with a crooked grin, “these quarters?”

Leonid scoffs, rolling his eyes. “If you’re just going to _judge,_ Basten, I will uninvite you from ever seeing the insides of these four walls again.”

In that, a promise – if he squints. “And why would I ever see them again?”

“Because you’re good at _lifting things_ ,” says Leonid, waspish. “And perhaps a thing or two beyond.”

Basten’s smile grows wider. “So long as it’s at _least_ two. I’ve heard the sounds you make. Don’t sell me short.”

Leonid scoffs again, though Basten can see even in the dim and dusty room that a flush has crept up his neck and flared to life beneath the skin of his cheeks. For someone so insistent that he’s entirely beyond being _flustered_ –

Well. He’s pretty easy to charm.

“What do you want me to move?” Basten asks after he’s let Leonid live in that moment for long enough. After all, he’s said he’ll help, and he _will._ It wouldn’t do to have his – companion living in the middle of a pile of rubbish. However loudly Leonid insists that _the gutter is good enough for me_ , he’s --

Well, not delicate, but certainly used to a few finer things in life. And after everything that happened at Haven, he deserves at least this much stability.

Leonid gestures vaguely toward some large remains of furniture, while he wanders back toward his heap – of, indeed, broken picture frames, but also crumbling stones and broken remains of weapons and tattered sheets belonging to another era entirely – and starts picking up items and sorting them into smaller piles.

“You have four siblings,” says Basten, hauling a spindly chunk of a broken bed frame past Leonid and out onto the walkway beyond.

“Yes,” says Leonid, examining a tattered canvas with narrow eyes. “Funny, this looks _just_ like my mother. I’ll need to keep it and think on her often.”

The picture is a horse, and one in serious need of feeding.

Leonid smiles pleasantly at Basten, placing the broken painting on a nail that juts from a crumbling piece of masonry. He fusses with it, straightening the frame so that it hangs with all the precision of a fine gallery, though why he bothers while it’s still caked in dust and the canvas curls downward in sad strips is beyond Basten. “And you,” Leonid says, attention flicking back to Basten for a moment as he returns to his pile. “You have siblings, I suppose.”

“Five,” says Basten, tugging crooked drawers from a slumping dresser that’s half rot. Drawers stacked neatly on the ground, he hefts the dressed up over one shoulder and walks it toward the front of the room.

Leonid pauses in gathering stones and broken arrows in a white canvas sheet, eyes pinned entirely on Basten. “Five,” he repeats distantly, as Basten ducks through the door and dumps the dresser on to the stone. Leonid’s stare is like a hot weight against planes of his shoulder.

“Yeah,” says Basten, tossing him a quick, knowing grin – which, at once, makes Leonid’s eyes narrow with irritation and his attention turn fixedly back to the task at hand. “I’ve got three older siblings, and the twins are younger.”

“And are you close?” asks Leonid. “You seem the sort.”

He says it lightly. He doesn’t mean it that way, though. Even Basten can hear that.

“With – some of them,” admits Basten.

Leonid snorts. “Then you’re _some_ up on me. Decent parents?”

It’s not an easy sort of question to answer. Basten’s weight shifts as he leans, for a moment, against the wall, watching Leonid unthinkingly sort refuse into separate piles. The wooden things he can burn have been settled in a little heap further from the door, small and fiddly bits tucked inside the square of canvas, while other, larger items lean against the wall.

He has some practicality underneath the bluster. Something almost like pragmatism. Basten saw it at Haven and in the aftermath. He certainly saw it on the road here.

Why he runs from it, then, why he insists –

Not that it especially matters. Basten understands enough about people to know that there are plenty who _choose_ who they want to be. It’s something that’s hard not to learn in a mercenary company, everyone coming with some sort of story attached, something’s that that’s changed them from what they were and into something – some _one_ – else.

“It’s complicated,” he says finally.

Leonid snorts, looking up from where he’s crouched over a pile of tarnished silver jewelry that he’s sorting. His dark stare is knowing. “Ah, _complexity._ If there is anything I understand about family, then surely it’s that, Basten. A vile thing, complicated relationships. Family, in all its inherent _failures._ For every Sacha and Eloise, I’m sure there are a hundred – _Leonid and Iona_ s. Or, worse still, _Leonid and his parents_.”

“Yours too, then?” Basten asks.

This is the closest they’ve gotten to talking about much of anything, Basten realizes. Sure, they’d talked about what it took to kill people, and Leonid likes to _flirt_ and be _mouthy,_ but he’s never –

Opened up at all. Shared anything beyond loud proclamations of who he is and what he care for and what he most certainly does not.

And Basten would be lying if he said he didn’t like this. If he didn’t find being plucked from the tavern to offer help… charming. Like Leonid had said. _This is_ charming, _not_ bothering.

He was right.

Leonid shrugs, plucking a ring from the tangle of necklaces. He holds it up to the chill light beaming in through the open door, squinting at the filigree. “ _You will be a decent member of this family_ ,” says Leonid, dropping his voice to imitate someone Basten hasn’t met, “ _or you will not be a member of this family at all_. Easy for him to say, of course, when he hadn’t bothered to spend more than the absolute bare minimum of time required by his belief in the _sanctity_ of _fatherhood_ – which, really, meant being just about as distant as the Maker and saving his brief moments of attention for Alla and Viktor.”

A pause, during which Basten tries to think of something to say. A means to respond to this new intimacy, an _honesty_ he hasn’t seen in Leonid since the nights immediately following Haven – except this is _different._ This isn’t a wound split open by trauma, bubbling forth beyond control.

Leonid knows what he’s doing.

His confusion must show on his face, because as soon as Leonid’s openness appears, it vanishes again. Leonid looks up with a smile easy as sunlight, entirely disconnected from the confession that just dropped from his lips. “I think this ring is _emerald,_ but I suppose if it’s a valuable ring that’s been abandoned in a vile keep in the middle of nowhere, it’s just as likely to be unbreakably cursed as not, isn’t it? Here – take a look.” He stands, thrusting the ring at Basten, and turning away immediately to wander toward the hearth with an armful of rescued wooden trinkets – though their rescue will be short-lived indeed.

Basten watches Leonid’s back as he tidily piles the salvaged wood near the hearth, as he walks to the window and uses his sleeve to scrub at the grime.

Leonid glances back over his shoulder, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. “Well,” he says, breaking the silence, “Were you planning on moving the rest of this for me or were you too bowled over by the notion that I’ve more to me than a beautiful face and wicked tongue?”

It’s all so unexpected that Basten’s not entirely sure how to respond.

Sometimes, he feels like talking to Leonid is like trying to undo some especially nasty curse a cultist has left to snare unwary travellers – intricate and barbed and, at its core, purposefully _hidden._

Of course, there’s also the part with the explosions. That, Basten knows how to deal with.

“I’ve always known there was more to you that that, Leonid,” he says. “You’ve also got a huge ego.”

“Ha!” barks Leonid. “A fair enough thing to note. Now tell me: have I just won myself a pretty new trinket, or will I be haunted by some demon to the very end of my miserable days?”

Basten turns the ring over in his palm. It is nothing more than it seems: a tarnished ring with a tiny emerald that glints insistently in the stark light. “No demons,” he says.

“Good! That’s a fine enough little gem that I might have had to fight them for it. Shall we, then?” He tips his head toward an ornate headboard that’s split down the middle. “Can you imagine,” he says, once Basten has dropped the ring back into his palm and hefted the heavy headboard up, “exactly how vigorously one would have needed to _fuck_ to break that? It’s _resilient-looking_.”

“I can imagine,” grunts Basten, heaving it toward the door. When he finally wrestles it through and sets it against the short wall, he turns and shoots Leonid a pointed look. “If you got at least two Qunari together –”

“At _least_ two!” exclaims Leonid, eyes widening. “Why, the scenarios you conjure! Though you oughtn’t make suggestions you can’t follow through on, Basten.”

“That was an observation, not a suggestion,” says Basten wryly, brushing dust from his tunic. “It could be a suggestion, though. If you’re interested.”

Leonid laughs, pushing his pale hair from his forehead and revealing the shadowy strip where his hair’s growing in darker. “There comes a point in a man’s life,” Leonid says with a breezy sigh, “when he must acknowledge his limitations, and I must say, Basten, that more than two Qunari would likely be past mine. How ashamed I am to admit it, but there you are. However, _one_ after he’s set a fire for me and helped me sweep at least a _fraction_ of the dust from this place? Well. I might manage that.”

Again, heat flares to life beneath Basten’s skin. As simple as this: that half-lidded look, the knowing smile, the promise of the feel of Leonid skin beneath Basten’s hands, a familiar mouth against his neck. He moves forward, through the narrow space and toward the windowsill where Leonid’s settled, waiting with his arms folded across his chest.

“You do know how to make fires on your own, Leonid,” says Basten, drawing near enough to touch.

“Of course I do,” murmurs Leonid. One hand flashes out and he tangles his fingers in the front of Basten’s tunic, tugging him closer. His eyes are shadowed in the dark space, though still they shine with a heat that never seems to burn itself out. “I could also have asked a servant to lend me a hand in hauling things from this room – but watching you lift heavy things and wiggle your fingers and set things aflame serves more than a strictly practical purpose. So… if you don’t mind?”

He doesn’t.

 

 


End file.
